The present invention relates to a process for producing a bio-organic calcium composition mainly based on amino acid-calcium chelates and/or peptide-calcium chelates, and an oral nutrient agent comprising the thus produced amino acid-calcium chelates and/or peptide-calcium chelates composition.
It has been known for long that calcium is one of the fundamental elements of human body. Calcium plays an active role in many physiological activities of human body, such as modulating muscle function, blood flow of capillary, participating in blood coagulation and nerve impulse transfer, and maintaining heart beat rate, etc. If human body is in short of calcium, many kinds of diseases may occur. For example, if a woman in pregnancy or in wet nurse lacks of calcium, it is harmful to the growth of fetus, causing unhealthy teeth and bones, poor blood coagulation, and muscle convulsion, etc. With long term lacking of calcium, children may grow with unhealthy bones, even become rickets, and elder human may have loose bones and bone hyperplasia. Lacking of calcium may also be a factor of inducing hypertension, diabetics, vascular sclerosis, and elder dementia. It is very important to provide adequate calcium supply to human since calcium can not be produced by human body and can only be absorbed from food. However, since customs, habits, feed behaviors and food structures are so widely not alike in countries and nationals, the actual daily absorption of calcium are quite different. It has been reported that lacking of calcium is a world wide problem. In many countries, calcium provided by dietary is not enough comparing to the calcium needed by a human body. In some countries, standards for daily minimum calcium supply to a human have been set up. For example, such a standard is 1,000 mg/day for an adult human, and 1,500 mg/day for junior in the United States of America. Similarly, a standard of daily calcium supply in China is 800 mg/day. However, the actual daily calcium supply in China is less than 500 mg/day due to the lacking of diary products in food structure. It has been reported that there is about 900 million people without enough calcium supply in China.
At the present, various kinds of calcium supplement products are available to human. However, these products have a poor actual absorbing rate to human. It has been known for long time that the calcium absorption is mainly occurred in human intestine. Only soluble calcium ions in intestine can be absorbed. But, since the pH in intestine is normally in the range of about 7.2-7.8, this weak basic condition makes the most calcium contained in these supplement product insoluble and can not be absorbed at all in human intestine. This phenomena often occurs with inorganic calcium, such as calcium chloride, calcium hydroxide, calcium oxide, etc. On the hand, organic calcium products, such as calcium gluconate, calcium lactate, and calcium citrate, etc. are more soluble comparing with inorganic calcium. But, the problem with these organic calcium products is that their calcium content is very low in general. Even taking large amount of these organic calcium products, the actual absorption of calcium still can not reach the needed level.
Recent studies in the theory and mechanism of the chelate of amino acid and calcium disclose that mineral elements can be chelated with amino acid to form an xe2x80x9camino acid-mineral element chelatexe2x80x9d. This amino acid-mineral element chelate is soluble in the basic fluid of pH above 7.0, such as in intestine fluid, and can be absorbed by the epithelial cell of intestine during the active transportation of amino acid. Thus, mineral elements, such as calcium contained in these chelates, is transported into blood. In this process, amino acid plays a role of carrying mineral ions while itself is useful to human body. After the amino acid-calcium chelate is transported into blood, it forms a sustained releasing xe2x80x9cmobile calcium poolxe2x80x9d in the blood. This xe2x80x9cmobile calcium poolxe2x80x9d continues to release Ca2+ to meet the needs of bones, nerve system, and muscles. This mobile calcium pool neither causes Ca2+ concentration in blood harmfully high nor increases the Ca2xe2x88x92 excretion by kidney. Therefore, this amino acid-calcium chelate has been considered as the most efficient way of supplement of calcium. In accordance with the theory of amino acid-calcium chelate, peptide with molecular weight less than 1,500 Dalton can also form peptide-mineral ion chelate with mineral elements. Then, this chelate of amino acid-mineral ion can be absorbed by human body through the active amino acid transportation of the epithelial cells of intestine. This theory of amino acid-calcium chelate also indicates that under the appropriate condition, calcium and proteins can become ions and peptide and/or amino acid suitable for chelating, respectively, whereby to form readily absorbable peptide-calcium chelates and amino acid-calcium chelates.
It has been known for long that animal bones contain calcium and protein. Many attempts have been conducted to utilize fresh animal bones to produce edible proteins. U.S. Pat. No. 5,163,129 disclosed a particulate proteinaceous product and methods for producing the same from waste raw animal parts, which comprises crushing the raw materials to produce a suspension, hydrolyzing proteins with protease, heating to inactivate enzymes, screening, concentrating, pasteurizing, removing water, and separating oil. The final products contain non-denatured protein, oil, amino acids, and metal ions.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,420,723 disclosed a method for converting blood, animal parts, bone wastes into partial hydrolyzed protein, which comprises comminution of the starting material, adding water, acid or base to adjust pH, heating, cooling, adding proteinase, such as papain and pancreatic amylase to conduct enzymatic decomposition, filtration (including deactivate enzyme). concentrating and pasteurizing, removing lipid by centrifuge, and spray drying to obtain homogenized final products.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,176,199 disclosed a method of extracting proteins from beef bones by crushing the bones to a determined size, cooking the bones, adding papain to conduct enzymatic decomposition, filtration, and removing lipid by centrifuge.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,473,589 disclosed a method of producing liquid protein product from residues and waste products, such as fish, poultry, pork and beef, which comprises alkaline treatment with heat and alkali, and adding protease for enzymatic decomposition. The final products may be conserved with various acids.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,452,888 disclosed a method of producing low molecular weight peptide composition, which comprises adding water and acid to adjust pH, and adding at least two acid proteases to conduct enzymatic decomposition. Final product contains low molecular peptides.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,402,873 disclosed a method of producing proteins from fresh or cured pork bones, which comprises comminution, adding water, heating, adding papain to conduct enzymatic decomposition, deactivate enzyme by heating, rapid cooling, separate liquid from solids, centrifuging the liquid phase to produce liquid protein, then concentrating to final product.
None of any prior simple means or procedures economically produce high content bio-organic calcium from animal bones. Prior arts focused on extracting of proteins. The products of the prior arts contains very little calcium. Therefore, what is needed is a high efficient calcium product that can provide sufficient absorbable bio-organic calcium to human and the production process thereof.
An objective of the present invention is to produce a bio-organic calcium composition mainly containing peptide-calcium chelates and/or amino acid-calcium chelates.
Another objective of the present invention is to produce a bio-organic calcium composition containing very low lipids.
A further objective of the present invention is to produce a bio-organic calcium composition containing additional nutritious component, such as amino acids and peptides.
A further objective of the present invention is to produce a nutrient agent containing the bio-organic calcium composition.
It is a still further objective of the present invention to provide a process for producing a bio-organic calcium composition mainly based on peptide-calcium chelates and/or amino acid-calcium chelates.
The process in accordance with the present invention produces a bio-organic calcium product from fresh animal bones. In accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the process comprises basic stages of washing and cleaning fresh beef bones, frozen, comminuting bones to form a suspension, removing lipid/oil with steaming/boiling under appropriate pressure and temperature, conducting enzymatic decomposition for further removing lipid/oil, carrying out biochemical treatment to reduce the collagen and phosphoprotein to low molecular weight peptides and amino acids, acidic activation, neutralization, deodorization, and spray drying.
It is the most important feature of the present invention that the calcium hydrophosphate contained in animal bones releases Ca2+ by acidic activation. The released Ca2+ is chelated with peptides and/or amino acids to form bio-organic calcium readily absorbable to human body.
After the acidic activation, calcium hydroxide is used for neutralizing the acids. This treatment not only avoids the sodium ions being presented in the final product, but also increases the calcium content in the final products.
It is preferred to utilize fresh beef bones as raw materials because over 90% calcium of an animal is located in bones. Collagen and phosphoprotein are rich in animal bones. Trace mineral elements and vitamins contained in animal bones are far more rich than that of meat. However, nutrition contents are different among bones, for example, bones that are more active in basic metabolism, such as vertebrate bones and ribs contain much more nutrition than other bones. Vertebrate bones and ribs also contain more Ca2+ than others. The preferred raw materials for the process in accordance with the present invention are fresh beef vertebrate bones and ribs.
In accordance with one preferred embodiment of the present invention, lipids/oil are repeatedly removed because they are harmful to human body if overtaken. The first lipids/oils removing step is undertaken during the steam/boiling stage, which removes about 15-25% (by weight) of the total lipids/oils contained in the raw materials. The second lipids/oils removing step is conducted by a further steaming/boiling treatment after the comminution of the bones, which removes 25-30% (by weight) of the total lipids/oils. Final lipids/oils removing step is completed by adding lipase to conduct enzymatic decomposition, which removes 25-30% (by weight) of the total lipids/oils. After these three lipids/oils removing steps, the lipids/oils content in the final product is less than 3% of the total weight of the final products.
In order to provide final products in a sterilization manner, the process in accordance with the present invention comprises the following sterilizing steps: 1) steaming/boiling of the whole bones; 2) adding dry ice to decrease the temperature in order to reduce the proliferation of bacteria during the comminution of the raw materials; 3) heating the materials during the deactivation of enzyme; and 4) conducting pasteurization during the homogenization of the product and deodorization.
Another feature of the present invention is to utilize xcex2-cyclodextrin as deodorizing agent. Utilizing the xcex2-cyclodextrin can eliminate the fishy odor of the final product and increases preserving time of the final product is extended.